Black & Abroad and McCann Canada Tackle Widespread AI Bias

Today, Black & Abroad, the brand dedicated to redefining world experiences for the modern Black traveller, announced the launch of “See You There,” a new initiative that leverages AI to help its customers imagine their next tourism adventure, showcasing the beauty and luxury of international travel for the Black community.

Created in partnership with agency McCann Canada, “See You There” activates Black and Abroad’s prolific archive of content featuring photos of guests from its previous trips and turns it into a powerful 1:1 experience. The campaign, based on the idea that every trip starts by picturing yourself there, uses generative AI to create personalised landing pages trained on selections from the brand’s catalogue of more than 11,000 photos of guests from previous trips. The landing pages, filled with hyperreal images of each guest at Black & Abroad’s upcoming 2024 destinations (such as Senegal, Ghana, and France) paint a new picture of the future of travel.

An alarming path to finding the joy

The campaign presents past Black & Abroad travellers with joyous, inspirational images depicting them in exciting places they have yet to visit. The process of developing the work, however, uncovered a darker truth: a world of bias encoded in AI models. Outputs from the generative platforms used tended to lighten guests skin, straighten their hair, and even generate them into scenes of poverty, suggesting that the base generative models used have been trained on incomplete and biassed photographic data. They also struggled to generate accurate images of Black & Abroad guests at specific destinations, such as Macchu Pichu in Peru and tapas bars in Barcelona.

In addition to the consumer campaign, Black & Abroad is releasing its findings on AI biases as a way to advance the conversation around bias and AI to the larger travel industry. In asking “Where is the Black traveller?” The campaign aims to authentically celebrate Black joy in travel – and overcome AI biases that may stand in the way.

The findings are presented in a powerful editorial package here.

“It's pretty crazy that what started off as an innocent email campaign to re engage our past clients ended up being a crash course on the baked-in algorithmic biases plaguing Al's perceived objectivity,” said Eric Martin, chief creative officer, Black & Abroad. “Yes, we're a luxury travel brand – but there’s a responsibility for us to shed light on an oversight of this magnitude, inciting a call to action to mitigate the potential of the more serious consequences that can arise in other industries as a result of these inherent prejudices.”

“As AI begins to ingrain itself in our everyday lives, our duty to make it accessible to everyone becomes even more apparent. While AI can often feel like a space for endless opportunities, we can’t be afraid to test its abilities and hold it to a higher standard,” said Kent Johnson, chief strategy officer, Black & Abroad. “This campaign is a timely reminder that the path to representation is a journey worth exploring.”

“We started this project with an earnest desire to visualise Black & Abroad’s guests at its upcoming destinations and are proud of having pushed through to achieving that goal. Generative AI tools are giving us ways to personalise our campaigns to degrees that were not possible or realistic even a year ago,” said Ian Mackenzie, chief creative officer, McCann Worldgroup Canada. “However, we believe the process was much harder than it would have been had we been training our models on white travellers. And while we won’t solve bias in AI overnight, ‘See You There’ provides powerful breadcrumbs for us to follow as we push into an exciting, inclusive, AI-powered future.”

Since 2015, Black & Abroad has been a global leader in redefining representation in the travel industry, reframing the way the industry sees the Black community and vice versa. The brand has worked with the team behind “See You There” on previous campaigns, including “Go Back to Africa” (2019) and “Black Elevation Map” (2022).

Initiative Canada is leading the media strategy behind the campaign, which leverages an advanced multi-vendor audience solution to reach Black travellers and mitigate potential bias through data vendor diversification. This audience approach will be activated across a massive pool of donated online and offline media inventory, including placements in Times Square. Digital media will leverage image recognition software and data partners to target the overwhelming amount of online content featuring white travellers and juxtapose it with the campaign message of “Where is the Black traveller?” for the greatest impact.

To learn more, visit here.